Microsoft Teams update roundup: The best new collaboration features

If your organization already uses Microsoft Teams for internal or external communication, you’ll be happy to know that Microsoft continues to release monthly updates for the application that greatly advance the collaboration capabilities. If you haven’t used Teams before, it is included in most Microsoft 365 packages and integrates with the Office storage applications like SharePoint and traditional Office applications like Word and Excel.

We’ve put together a list of the latest updates to Microsoft Teams that will encourage collaboration among your staff.

Teams meeting video enhancements

It is easiest to communicate with a group of people when you can see them. In the past, the number of meeting attendees that can be seen on video in Teams meetings has been limited. Teams meetings now support additional layouts designed to maximize the number of attendees that are shown on video. This includes a 3x3 gallery view and a large gallery view that can show up to 49 attendees on video at once.

The Together Mode option is another great video collaboration feature that puts all into a virtual shared space like a round table or auditorium. Together Mode is now available on Teams phones making it more accessible to groups using different devices.

Breakout Rooms

In December, Microsoft launched Breakout Rooms for Teams. Breakout rooms give meeting organizers the ability to divide attendees into smaller meetings to facilitate small group discussion. When breakout rooms are created within the meeting, meeting organizers can jump in between the main meeting and breakout rooms to check-in with how discussions are going. They can also make announcements to all breakout rooms at once or pull breakout room attendees back into the main meeting. If breakout room attendees shared any files during their discussion, they can be shared with the main meeting and become accessible in the meeting chat after the call has ended.

Improved search

Over the past few months. Microsoft has worked hard to improve search capabilities in Teams. With the latest update, they have introduced a newly developed relevance model that generates top results based on relevancy instead of just displaying recent messages in chronological order.  This relevance model takes into account the people that you communicate with most frequently and the channels you are most active in to display results that it thinks will be most relevant to you.

Another useful search feature that largely goes unnoticed is the shortcut ability. Typing “/” into the search bar will pull up a list of available command shortcuts available via the search bar. These include quick actions like setting your status or navigating to a specific team or channel.  Users can also use this ability to quickly search for recent @mentions they may have missed.

Mobile experience updates

Teams users aren’t always stuck behind their desks using a computer so creating a great mobile experience is a major goal for the Teams development team. Teams is available on most mobile devices with dedicated apps in both the Google Play Store and iOS App Store. With the latest update, the Meet Now feature was introduced to mobile devices. This allows users to start meetings directly from their calendar on mobile and add attendees as necessary.

Another major addition to the Teams experience on mobile is screensharing. In a recent update, mobile device users were given the ability to see shared content in meetings. In the latest update, Teams introduced the ability to share their own content on a mobile device to meeting attendees. This opens the door to many opportunities for Teams meetings to move away from the desk and help teams collaborate no matter their location.